He looked at the solemn, dreaming house in the late summer sunshine; he observed a robin issue out from a lime tree and inspect him sideways; and then another robin issue from another lime tree and drive the first one away. Then he noticed a smear of dust on his own left boot, and flicked it off with a handkerchief. Then, as he put his handkerchief away again, he saw Jenny coming out from the drawing-room window. She looked really extraordinarily beautiful as she came slowly across towards him and he stood to meet her. She was bare-headed, but her face was shadowed by the great coils of hair. She was in a perfectly plain pink dress, perfectly cut, and she carried herself superbly. She looked just a trifle paler than yesterday, he thought, and there was a very reserved, steady kind of question in her eyes. (I am sorry to be obliged to go on saying this sort of thing about Jenny every time she comes upon the scene; but it is the sort of thing that everyone is obliged to go on thinking whenever she makes her appearance.) "I've got a good deal to say," said Dick, after they had sat a moment or two. "May I say it right out to the end?" "Why, certainly," said Jenny. Dick leaned back and crossed one knee over the other. His manner was exactly right--at any rate, it was exactly what he wished it to be, and all through his little speech he preserved it. It was quite restrained, extremely civilized, and not at all artificial. It was his method of presenting a fact--the fact that he really was in love with this girl--and was in his best manner. There was a lightness of touch about this method of his, but it was only on the surface. "I daresay it's rather bad form my coming and saying all this so soon, but I can't help that. I know you must have gone through an awful lot in the last month or two--perhaps even longer--but I don't know about that. And I want to begin by apologizing if I am doing what I shouldn't. The fact is that--well, that I daren't risk waiting." He did not look at Jenny (he was observing the robin that had gone and come again since Jenny had appeared), but he was aware that at his first sentence she had suddenly settled down into complete motionlessness. He wondered whether that was a good omen or not. "Well, now," he said, "let me give a little account of myself first. I'm just thirty-one; I've got four hundred a year of my own, and Lord Talgarth allows me twelve hundred a year more. Then I've got other expectations, as they say. My uncle gives me to understand that my allowance is secured to me in his will; and I'm the heir of my aunt, Lady Simon, whom you've probably met. I just mention that to show I'm not a pauper--" "Mr. Guiseley--" began Jenny.